How the December 16, 2012 incident changed discourse around women’s safety in India

Activists and legal experts say the December 16, 2012 gangrape incident in Delhi in which six men, one of them a juvenile, brutally assaulted a student in a bus, was a tipping point.

Activists, members of the intelligentsia and legal experts hailed the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the death sentence awarded to three of the four convicts involved in the rape and fatal assault of a 23-year-old woman on December 16, 2012, in Delhi that had outraged the nation.

A man makes paintings during a protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar against the December 16, 2012, gangrape incident.(PTI File Photo)

The case, in which six men, one of them a juvenile, brutally assaulted a student in a bus that sped around the city undetected for many hours was a tipping point, they say.

For the first time, a rape case had forced the then UPA government to initiate statutory changes in provisions relating to punishment in sexual assault cases of extreme brutality.

“This one incident changed the discourse around women’s safety in the country, setting in motion reforms in law and policies to tackle such heinous crimes,” said justice Usha Mehra, retired Delhi high court judge.

Mehra, who headed the committee to come up with safety measures for women in the aftermath of the December 16 incident, said the case was a kind of a “rude awakening” for society. “It brought to the fore the lacunae in our enforcement and legal framework. It was the trigger for a new and harsher law to deal with sexual assault cases of such brutality,” she said.

After fierce protests following the incident, the then government had announced a three-member panel, led by retired chief justice of India JS Verma to frame a strong rape law to replace the existing antiquated criminal law to tackle violent crime against women.

The recommendation of the Verma committee formed the backbone of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act that the Parliament passed in April 2013. The law provides for stringent punishment including life sentence and death penalty for gangrape. This was just four months after the Verma panel had given its recommendations.

“This was really a rarest of rare crime. The incident was a landmark, particularly when it came to issues concerning the safety and security of women. It created a never-before awareness not only in the metros but in small towns too, putting the pressure on the government to act,” said Dr Indira Hirway, director and professor of Economics, Centre for Development Alternatives, Ahmedabad.

It was not the only reform that the government introduced. In February 2013, the then UPA government announced a special Rs 1,000 crore “Nirbhaya fund” to support initiatives to bolster safety and security of women. Six fast-track courts were set up to handle rape cases.

The corpus, administered by the Union women and child development (WCD) ministry is being used to support government initiatives to bolster safety and security of women. The Union road ministry is planning to have panic button and GPS installed in all public transport vehicles in the country by 2019.

The WCD ministry, along with department of telecommunications and the ministry of electronics and information technology, has been working closely to equip all smartphones with a panic/SOS button that when pressed for a pre-defined time would trigger a call to some pre-determined number (of a family member, friend, police helpline) chosen and fed in the phone by the user.